Honoring a leader, learning hard lessons, and choosing resilience and renewal
I still remember the evening of November 4, 1995 – not so much where I was, but what was running through my mind when the news flashed across the screen: Yitzhak Rabin had been shot.“Oh no,” I muttered. “Why the bloodshed? What will this killing achieve?” There are moments that freeze time; that was one of them.
Rabin was a good man, and a decent one to boot. As a young reader fascinated by Israel’s military resilience, I was in awe of his gallantry during the Six Day War. A lieutenant-general then, he personified the quiet discipline of the Israel Defense Forces – a soldier’s soldier, forged in necessity but never intoxicated by power. When he became prime minister in 1974, it was again Rabin who steadied the IDF after the trauma of the Yom Kippur War.
And who could forget Entebbe? Barely two years into his premiership, his second term, Rabin approved what history now calls Operation Yonatan – that extraordinary hostage-rescue mission at Uganda’s airport in 1976. It was daring, surgical, and impossibly risky. Israel’s best – commanded by Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu – flew across continents, struck with precision, and came home with nearly every hostage alive. Only Yonatan himself fell. Rabin’s decision that day captured something profound about the Israeli spirit: courage under fire, moral clarity under chaos. Even in tragedy, there was triumph.
But there is another side to my memory of Rabin, one that invites reflection rather than nostalgia: the Oslo Accords. Oslo was an effort to bridge the distance between war and peace, to test whether a phased process – mutual recognition, limited self-rule, interim arrangements – could reset the conflict’s basic equation. It was never a celebration: the texts were dry, the handshakes stiff, the debates in Israel ferocious. Still, Rabin, alongside Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, placed the bet. He received the Nobel Peace Prize – and paid with his life, assassinated in Tel Aviv in November 1995.
Thirty years on, it is fashionable to talk about “before Oslo” and “after Oslo,” just as many of us now measure life “before October 7” and “after.” Memory has a way of compressing, and sometimes distorting, complex chapters. But we owe Rabin – and ourselves – an honest remembrance. Oslo was a bold wager rooted in a conviction that we needed to test a diplomatic opening. It was also a wager that met hard realities: incitement that never stopped, terror that escalated, and a Second Intifada that made buses, cafés, and daily life feel like front lines. Even those who celebrated the intent of Oslo felt the ground shift under their feet as suicide bombings multiplied and faith in a partner eroded.
My own view has evolved in the same uncomfortable middle many Israelis inhabit. I honor Rabin’s courage to try. I also accept that sovereignty requires clear-eyed assessment of results. In hindsight, it seems obvious that not insisting early and explicitly on enduring recognition of Israel as the Jewish state left a core dispute unresolved. It is also clear that building security capacity on the Palestinian side failed when militias and terror infrastructures took precedence over governance and education.
And when Israel later withdrew unilaterally from Gaza, some hoped the move would reset the board. Instead, rockets multiplied, tunnels proliferated, and on October 7, 2023, we saw horror that defies words. Many now argue that the seeds of that calamity were planted in the permissive ambiguities of the Oslo era. Whether one agrees fully or partly, we must at least admit the chain of cause and effect deserves sober, non-slogan scrutiny.
So how do we remember Rabin honestly without giving in to despair? By separating the man from the myths, and the mission from the mistakes Israel made along the way. Rabin the soldier-statesman radiated something Israel still needs: seriousness. He was not a utopian; he was a builder. He believed in deterrence with a human face, in peace with iron fences and open gates, and in the quiet, unglamorous work of institutions. His peace with Jordan – more popular than Oslo, more durable – shows what reciprocity looks like when leaders actually mean “end of conflict.” His legacy is not a single handshake; it is a way of leading.
We also need to be honest about how the Second Intifada reshaped the Israeli psyche. It did not erase Israel’s longing for peace; it eroded the belief that peace was still attainable at the time. When cafés and buses exploded, Israelis learned a brutal lesson: concessions without enforceable obligations invite exploitation, not reconciliation. That lesson, for better or worse, has informed ballots, budgets, and barrier routes ever since. You cannot wish it away with a press release or a university resolution.
And yet Israel remains, stubbornly, a nation that plans weddings even during wars, a society that sprints to the sound of sirens and then gets back to school drop-off the next morning. That is resilience and renewal, not as slogans but as muscle memory. The same country that pioneered hostage rescues also pioneered drip irrigation, cybersecurity, and (yes) vaccine technologies and AI-infused medical tools that save lives far beyond its borders. Innovating the future of Israel is not merely about startups, it is about the civic software that lets a small nation absorb shocks and still choose life.
Where does that leave Oslo in Israel’s story? Not as a punchline or a shrine, but as a chapter whose truest legacy lies in what it taught the nation. Going forward, any process worth pursuing must start with fundamentals that Oslo sidestepped: unambiguous recognition of Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people; ironclad security arrangements under Israeli control for as long as threats persist; real reform in Palestinian schools, media, and policing; and regional architecture that rewards normalization, not rejectionism. That may sound clinical. But Rabin, the engineer of security, would have understood. He did not confuse warmth with peace or applause with safety. He cared that Israeli kids could ride a bus.
I also believe Rabin would have admired the grit of today’s young Israelis — the soldiers, medics, and volunteers who, within hours, shifted from keyboards to kitchens to supply lines in hours; the entrepreneurs who paused a funding round to serve, then returned to build. He would have recognized in them the Palmach spirit he carried up Mt. Carmel with a two-year-old on his shoulders during the Mandate, and the steadiness he brought into the cabinet room when decisions were measured in hours, not weeks.
To remember Rabin well, we should resist two temptations. The first is romanticizing the 1990s into a sepia-toned promise land; the second is weaponizing his memory to delegitimize political opponents. Rabin’s assassination was the ugliest proof that demonization can turn to violence. Israelis honor his memory by tempering their rhetoric – especially online – and by debating as citizens who intend to live together after the vote. Political disagreement is the lifeblood of democracy; dehumanization is its poison.
I still carry that knot in my stomach when November returns, a quiet ache for all that Israelis have lost, and a deep respect for all that has been learned. For me, remembering Rabin is less about reliving the rally and more about recommitting to a kind of leadership and citizenship he modeled: patient, pragmatic, anchored in security, and willing to test openings when responsibility and reality allow. Peace, if it comes, will not be a photo on a lawn. It will be a million small choices to keep promises, to teach tolerance, to guard borders, and to build the economic and civic infrastructures that make coexistence more rational than rupture.
Rabin did not live to see the Abraham Accords, but he would have recognized their grammar: recognition first, negotiation second, peace as the product of shared interests and clear conditions. He would have welcomed regional partners who choose cooperation over grandstanding. He would also have insisted, quietly and firmly, that the Jewish state remains responsible for its own security. That is not a contradiction. It is the lesson Israelis keep relearning.
Israel’s story is not finished. “Unfinished” can be a lament; it can also be an invitation. The invitation is to build a future worthy of those who gave their lives for Israel, to teach children why Israel tried, where it faltered, and how it continues to adapt. To hold onto Rabin’s seriousness, his refusal to be intoxicated by easy words, and his belief that leadership is the art of facing facts and still choosing hope. If Israel does that, remembering Rabin becomes more than a ceremony; it becomes a living commitment to the values he embodied. It becomes a discipline – of resilience and renewal, of innovating the future of Israel not only in labs and code but in the hard, necessary work of shaping a peace that can last.
And so, 30 years after Rabin’s passing, twenty years after Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and as Israel embarks on a new era of peace – thanks to the vision of United States President Donald Trump and the courage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Churchill of our time – the hard lessons of history must be remembered. Peace must never come at any price. Its foundation must rest on an explicit and enduring recognition of Israel as the Jewish state. That is, and must remain, the starting point.
James Ogunleye, PhD, is a scholar, innovation strategist, and a historian of the IDF’s innovation ecosystem. He is the founder and editor of RenewingIsrael.org, and author of the book ‘Resilience & Renewal: The Future of Israel – How a Nation’s Courage, Creativity, and Faith Rebuilt the Promise of Tomorrow’. He writes at the intersection of resilience, faith, innovation, and national renewal.